No Good Multi-tasker When It Comes to Media Activities

Recently, researchers from Stanford University found out that there’s no good multi-tasker when it comes to media activity. When we are using different media simultaneously, we are actually bad at concentrating and organising information. It’s like the more you try to do, the worse you can do.

I personally find it very true. Because I tend to watch TV dramas when I’m drawing, but when my friends try to discuss what happened in those dramas, I usually have little idea about what they are talking about. When I try to remember the plot, nothing really comes to me except the faces of the leading characters. The situation is the same with reading online for me. When I read things online, I have to mute the TV, otherwise, my brain will constantly try to decode the messages I hear from the TV. However, when I read from books—the traditional sort of books—I think sometimes I manage to ignore the noises around. Of course it depends on how interesting the book is.

This reminds me of a report saying nowadays many Britons watch TV only because they are surfing online at the same time. So if the researchers from Stanford University are right about people can’t multitask, it would be obvious people devote their attentions to the Internet, not the TV. No wonder TV stations have to worry about the effectiveness of advertisements since the prosperity of the Internet.

The same report also said instead of sitting on the sofa together, family members tend to do their individual things. Therefore, new technologies become a destructive force driving families apart. Although I’m not from UK—I’m from China—I find the report sadly true for my family. We have three laptops at home, and we do our own things quietly after dinner in different corners of our apartment: My dad usually read news online; my mom simply uses her laptop to play games; I spend hours reading online novels.

So what do you think? Have you successfully done different things simultaneously with different media? And do you think new technologies become destructive force for family unity?